Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in 1976 (Valdez). A meme is a cultural element that is passed along through various means, commonly imitation (Valdez). Ideas turn into memes once they spread and imbed themselves into various aspects of society. With the rise of the social web, memes have found a new home within the internet. Digital memes have the opportunity to spread even quicker and farther than ever. Utilizing forums such as 4Chen, Youtube and various other social networking websites, memes can go viral in weeks, days or even hours.
In preparing to create an internet meme of our own, the brainstorming process proved rather difficult. Each member of our group conducted our own background research on various internet memes through a website entitled “Know Your Meme”. We found that internet memes can stem from anywhere, at anytime, about anything. The creation of an internet meme seems rather simple; however the difficult part is that possibilities are endless. Our preliminary brainstorming meeting left us with numerous rather broad ideas. Some of our initial ideas included the use of an awkward or funny photograph that we could Photoshop into various other images or video clips, an internet saying or a satirical clip of an important event.
When creating our internet meme we wanted to focus on something honest. We wanted to create a meme that was not staged. We believed that creating something forced or fake would result in a lack of interest amongst the audience. Throughout some of our other brainstorming meetings we decided on a list of criteria we wanted our meme to include. Initially, we wanted humour. Although various serious memes can go viral, such as Obama’s “Yes We Can” video, we thought it would be more likely to create something amusing. Secondly, we wanted something quick. We wanted to create something that somebody could stumble on, watch and spread in an instant. If the meme took long to watch people might pass by it or lose interest. As a result, we thought it best to use a pre-made video instead of trying to create a new one, which might not come out as organic and natural. The internet meme we decided to use is a video clip of a radio station changing on its own. The humour comes from the voices and reactions within the clip. The responses are humorous because they are so over the top. We thought this type of video could become viral as it is similar to the very popular Double Rainbow meme. Although a double rainbow is interesting and nice to look at, what really made that meme popular was the outrageous and over the top and reaction of the filmmaker to the double rainbow.
The first step in creating an internet meme is to actually create the meme. Next, we had to get the meme into the public’s eye. Not only that, but we needed to find a way to track it as well. As aforementioned, internet memes are commonly spread on social networking websites. One of the most popular websites to promote internet memes is Youtube. Thus, our initial instinct was to post the clip there. When uploading, Youtube allows you to add tags to your video. As a way to get people to find our video on their own we tagged the video with numerous different terms so that it would pop up in the results of varying searches.
Youtube, however, is not enough to change a video clip into a viral internet meme. We had to manually spread the link to the video to get people to watch. The initial place we added the video was to Facebook. Each of our group members included the link to the video clip on their Facebook page and encouraged our friends to watch it. This increased the number of views our video clip got, but still was not enough.
As a group we moved to other methods of dissemination. We posted links to the Youtube clip on websites such as Twitter, which allowed us to reach even more people. We also added the link to our Myspace, delicious, and Flicker accounts, along with any other social media website we are connected to. We received good results however our meme is nowhere near viral. The number of views the video has received is minimal, within the hundreds. Our friends and families, along with some other people who found the video through our efforts did find it amusing, which is a good sign. This increases the probability that they will send the link to another friend or post it somewhere else.
To further 'remix' our meme, we added the hilarious sound clip alone from or meme of the overreaction to other videos we thought were funny, or "f*in awesome!" This was another effort to further spread our meme. We added the sound of our video on top of a David Blaine video where he levitates. The levitation is amazing, but we thought the video becomes humorous once we added the reaction voice from our meme to it. Also we added the voice over of our meme to a video of an awesome hamster face, which is already outrageous looking alone, but when we add the hilarious reaction to it we think it adds to the humour. Another video we added the meme voice over to was a youtube video we found of a cat after surgery (the animal equivalent to david after dentist). The cat is still under the influence of the anesthetics from the surgery it just had and is wobbling around and actually falls right over at the end of the video. Again we thought this was a funny video, but once the outrageous voice over is put over top, it gives it more humour.
Now that the assignment is completed, we can realize things that we could have done differently. For example, the process of brainstorming took longer than expected. If we had narrowed down our ideas more accurately we would have been able to utilize the extra time to spread our meme more. This excess time would have also allowed us, as well as other viewers, to complete further steps in making the video clip viral. Our hopes originally were to receive remixes on the sound clip from other people. We probably didn't see this due to the short amount of time it has been online.
Meme Analysis
Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in 1976 (Valdez). A meme is a cultural element that is passed along through various means, commonly imitation (Valdez). Ideas turn into memes once they spread and imbed themselves into various aspects of society. With the rise of the social web, memes have found a new home within the internet. Digital memes have the opportunity to spread even quicker and farther than ever. Utilizing forums such as 4Chen, Youtube and various other social networking websites, memes can go viral in weeks, days or even hours.
In preparing to create an internet meme of our own, the brainstorming process proved rather difficult. Each member of our group conducted our own background research on various internet memes through a website entitled “Know Your Meme”. We found that internet memes can stem from anywhere, at anytime, about anything. The creation of an internet meme seems rather simple; however the difficult part is that possibilities are endless. Our preliminary brainstorming meeting left us with numerous rather broad ideas. Some of our initial ideas included the use of an awkward or funny photograph that we could Photoshop into various other images or video clips, an internet saying or a satirical clip of an important event.
When creating our internet meme we wanted to focus on something honest. We wanted to create a meme that was not staged. We believed that creating something forced or fake would result in a lack of interest amongst the audience. Throughout some of our other brainstorming meetings we decided on a list of criteria we wanted our meme to include. Initially, we wanted humour. Although various serious memes can go viral, such as Obama’s “Yes We Can” video, we thought it would be more likely to create something amusing. Secondly, we wanted something quick. We wanted to create something that somebody could stumble on, watch and spread in an instant. If the meme took long to watch people might pass by it or lose interest. As a result, we thought it best to use a pre-made video instead of trying to create a new one, which might not come out as organic and natural. The internet meme we decided to use is a video clip of a radio station changing on its own. The humour comes from the voices and reactions within the clip. The responses are humorous because they are so over the top. We thought this type of video could become viral as it is similar to the very popular Double Rainbow meme. Although a double rainbow is interesting and nice to look at, what really made that meme popular was the outrageous and over the top and reaction of the filmmaker to the double rainbow.
The first step in creating an internet meme is to actually create the meme. Next, we had to get the meme into the public’s eye. Not only that, but we needed to find a way to track it as well. As aforementioned, internet memes are commonly spread on social networking websites. One of the most popular websites to promote internet memes is Youtube. Thus, our initial instinct was to post the clip there. When uploading, Youtube allows you to add tags to your video. As a way to get people to find our video on their own we tagged the video with numerous different terms so that it would pop up in the results of varying searches.
Youtube, however, is not enough to change a video clip into a viral internet meme. We had to manually spread the link to the video to get people to watch. The initial place we added the video was to Facebook. Each of our group members included the link to the video clip on their Facebook page and encouraged our friends to watch it. This increased the number of views our video clip got, but still was not enough.
As a group we moved to other methods of dissemination. We posted links to the Youtube clip on websites such as Twitter, which allowed us to reach even more people. We also added the link to our Myspace, delicious, and Flicker accounts, along with any other social media website we are connected to.
We received good results however our meme is nowhere near viral. The number of views the video has received is minimal, within the hundreds. Our friends and families, along with some other people who found the video through our efforts did find it amusing, which is a good sign. This increases the probability that they will send the link to another friend or post it somewhere else.
To further 'remix' our meme, we added the hilarious sound clip alone from or meme of the overreaction to other videos we thought were funny, or "f*in awesome!" This was another effort to further spread our meme. We added the sound of our video on top of a David Blaine video where he levitates. The levitation is amazing, but we thought the video becomes humorous once we added the reaction voice from our meme to it. Also we added the voice over of our meme to a video of an awesome hamster face, which is already outrageous looking alone, but when we add the hilarious reaction to it we think it adds to the humour. Another video we added the meme voice over to was a youtube video we found of a cat after surgery (the animal equivalent to david after dentist). The cat is still under the influence of the anesthetics from the surgery it just had and is wobbling around and actually falls right over at the end of the video. Again we thought this was a funny video, but once the outrageous voice over is put over top, it gives it more humour.
Now that the assignment is completed, we can realize things that we could have done differently. For example, the process of brainstorming took longer than expected. If we had narrowed down our ideas more accurately we would have been able to utilize the extra time to spread our meme more. This excess time would have also allowed us, as well as other viewers, to complete further steps in making the video clip viral. Our hopes originally were to receive remixes on the sound clip from other people. We probably didn't see this due to the short amount of time it has been online.
Works Cited**
Valdez, Norman. “On Internet Memes” n.p. Sheridan College. Oakville. 7 Oct. 2010. Lecture.